the Nazis. From Sweden I hear reports that the Norwegians are fight
ing hard for their independence.
I wish I could have a long talk with you about the war, not the
military aspect, but the future. I feel strongly that the war won't be
won by military means alone, that we can win only if we can get the
millions of Europe on our side. I feel that we aren't doing enough to
get this. It is useless to say that we are fighting for freedom and democ
racy unless we can get the men of Europe to agree with our idea of
freedom and democracy. Churchill is a great man, a man of the
Elizabethan tradition, another Sir Francis Drake, and all Britain relies
on him. But do the peasants of France and Germany, Austria and
Poland feel the same about Churchill as we do? They don't want a big
man; they want a big plan, and I say we haven't got one, at least no
one has published one. Hitler has a plan, a plan of slavery and hate and
death to all decent men. If we are to smash him we need tanks and
planes certainly, but an idea is greater than these. We want something
bigger than Communism as we know it. Here your idea of a nation, a
world run by the workers comes in, meaning by workers every man who
does a job, and excluding every damned politician in the world. It
would be a new socialism, but I can't see the privileged in the world
giving up their power and profits. In your last letter you praised Roose
velt, saying that there was more socialism in U.S.A. than in all Russia.
Having been to neither I can't say. But so long as anyone in U.S.A. is
making profit out of armaments and the people's needs, how can you
talk of socialism in America? If Churchill or Roosevelt could get up and
say: "There will be no profit in the new world after the war," the mil
lions of Europe would rise against Hitler.
But I could go on on this theme for pages, and I have work to do.
Next letter I hope to tell you how I am getting on with child analysis.
Write soon.
- ••
Summerhill School
F estiniog, North Wales
March 20, 1941
My dear Reich,
Yours today. The difficulty in that New World of yours is
this: workers like you and me don't want to govern, because governing
is an inferior brand of creation, and the second-rate fellows will want